LWN.net founder and kernel contributor Jonathan Corbet offered an analysis of the code contributed to the Linux kernel between December 24 2008 and January 10 2010. 18% of contributions were made without a specific corporate affiliation, 7% weren't classified, and 75% were from people working for specific companies in roles where developing that code was a major requirement. "75% of the code comes from people paid to do it," Corbet said.

Why? One fifth of code contributions still come from persons without a specific corporate affiliation, so even individual developers can still have a role. The old hobby aspect of Linux may be mostly gone, but on the other hand Linux is more popular and more widely used and developed than ever, also by big companies and organizations. A major part of important and useful contributions have come from paid kernel developers, and Linux wouldn't be so advanced as it is now without them. Also, because the GPL promotes cooperation, all the new code contributed and added by paid developers is open and free to use and tweak.

Of course, corporate interests may often be quite different from those of home users. Business Linux interests tend to be server-focused whereas home users are often interested in using Linux on desktops more than companies are. According to some, there have been cases where code good for servers could have been preferred by Linus and others instead of code good for desktops - or at least some people have questioned some of the kernel developers' decisions on those grounds. However, nobody can deny that Linux wouldn't work quite well on desktops too, although there is, of course, always room for improvements too.

Furthermore, who's to say that the paid developers are just depressed code monkeys who slave for a paycheck? They might also be enthusiasts who got lucky and now have jobs doing what they would otherwise be doing for fun. Linus gets paid to work on the kernel and I'm pretty sure he's not just doing it for the money. Same for folks like Alan Cox, etc.